Idris Elba

He was born Idrissa Akuna Elba in London, England on Sept. 6, 1972, the only child of African immigrants; his mother was originally from Ghana and his father was a Sierra Leonean who worked as an engineer at the Ford plant in Dagenham. Elba spent his early years in Hackney, East London, which he claimed made him technically a Cockney Englishman, but the family later moved to the city's Canning Town area, a largely white neighborhood where Idris found himself periodically the victim of violence at the hands of racist schoolmates. Growing up listening to his father's American soul records, at age 14 he had begun helping his uncle in the latter's successful wedding DJ business and, while at Tri...